US markets end Friday’s session mostly in green

The US markets ended Friday’s choppy trading session mostly in green, as an unexpectedly strong January jobs report overshadow the sting of a weak outlook from e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. The Labor Department showed much stronger than expected job growth in the month of January but also an uptick in the unemployment rate. The Labor Department said non-farm payroll employment surged up by 304,000 jobs in January compared to street estimates for an increase of about 165,000 jobs. However, the report also showed the spike in employment in the previous month was downwardly revised to 222,000 jobs from the initially reported 312,000 jobs. Meanwhile, Amazon reported fourth quarter results that exceeded street estimates but forecast weaker than expected first quarter revenues.

Besides, a separate report from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) showed growth in the manufacturing sector unexpectedly reaccelerated in January after seeing a substantial slowdown in December. The ISM said its Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) climbed to 56.6 in January from a revised 54.3 in December, with a reading above 50 indicating growth in the manufacturing sector. Street had expected the manufacturing index to edge down to 54.0 from 54.1 originally reported for the previous month.

Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 64.22 points or 0.26 percent to 25063.89 and S&P 500 gained 2.43 points or 0.09 percent to 2706.53, while Nasdaq was down by 17.87 points or 0.25 percent to 7263.87.